Blender: mint condition
(My Gran’s mixer: Glasgow, Scotland)
The hand written price sticker on this box reads £18.25. They don’t price electrical items like that anymore – they’re all £–.99 or £–.00. The sum of £18.25 indicates that at the time, (possibly the 1980s?) 25p was substantial enough to include. The box is in mint condition, even though my Gran hoiks it out of the cupboard (which she sometimes refers to as a ‘press’) once a week or more to make soup. When I opened the box, I felt like I had been teleported to my childhood or further. It felt like new – this coil wired mixer with it’s single speed setting. When she asked my to lift out the boxes of cereal and pull out the box underneath, I certainly didn’t think the dated, yet pristine box would actually contain a Kenwood blender, but then I wasn’t giving my Gran much credit. Every item of hers that can be stored in its original packaging is in that packaging – I think she still has the box for her kettle, though it is probably another 1980s special. She’s a month off the age of ninety-one and she is bearing it with great dignity. Though she did mention that she usually drops the boxes cereal on her head when removing them from the cupboard. If she had a richer sense of humour, I would have assumed she was pulling my leg, but I do earnestly believe she falls victim to cupboard cascades on a frequent basis. However carefully she boxes and stacks all the items, however flawlessly they are stored, her frailty will spoil the patterns that have never failed her until now.
It is difficult for me to monitor her situation as although I have seen her weekly over the past seven years or so*and have certainly witnessed her decline in her old age, I have also grown older – moved from a naïve child to a slightly less naïve adult. I try to recollect how she has altered in that same timeframe, but there has been so much change in me, I cannot decide which one of us is more different from then. How can I judge if I can’t even trust the inexperienced opinions of a younger me? I have to settle for listening to her, really listening; she talks less now about her youth, she says she tires much more easily than before and she speaks about the regular funerals of friends that seem to be occurring less and less, simply as her circle of friends diminishes with illness and age. It perhaps sounds a little trite, but I find being with her a baffling and humbling experience. I cannot conceive living for so long, nor the pain of living through a world war, a long, lonely widowhood, loss of a child and now a longer, lonelier wait for death. Ever since I can remember, she peppers every talk of future action with “If I’m spared… “ meaning that she will do it if she doesn’t die, if God spares her until then. I rarely think of death as something that will affect me personally, not at my age anyway. But I suppose in a few years, I may well be adopting the same attitude, and keeping my electricals pristine in their boxes.
Not to depress you too much, I can bring you up to speed on my day. Yesterday was a wasted day as I awoke to discover the freezer door ajar. Much sighing ensued, and much grizzling. I was not placated to find that my food had been the main casualty. I tipped spongy foodstuffs into the bin with much remorse, ate dumplings for breakfast and tackled the chilly pond on the kitchen floor with a mop. It was to define the entire day. After dropping the remaining solid food at a friend’s empty freezer, I set to the defrosting. I hardly began anything else yesterday and simply used the fragments of time to tie up loose ends. Tomorrow will be better!
* This applies when I have been in Glasgow and not elsewhere – like in Asia.
– Today Rosie is NOT defrosting the freezer and is hopefully being very productive in Glasgow, Scotland –
Today is a better day!